Sunday, January 11, 2009

LinkedIn company profiles

Earlier today, I had what I thought was a great idea for LinkedIn: publish the title distribution within a company. You know how start-ups and banks give VP titles to anyone with a pulse? I often wonder when I see someone's title whether they are in fact senior in the org and have a lot of responsibility, or if the fact that they're a "Executive Senior VP" is merely indicative of the fact that even the janitors are actually "General Manager, Sanitation Services".

Turns out LinkedIn already does this. I first checked Google, and wasn't surprised to see that we're a company full of engineers.

LinkedIn also shows you which companies employees came from who end up at Google. Not surprisingly, they often come from Microsoft:

Lots of interesting data in there. Wouldn't it be interesting if LinkedIn published similar data for schools (which employers tend to hire from which schools), and cross-referenced job titles with education/degrees held? I'll bet there's lots of data mining one could do in there.

Separately, LinkedIn's "recent hires" and "recent promotions and changes" are fascinating for what they say about each company.